lessons in love and basic mathematics
by recycled-stars
Summary: Sex makes it harder to keep secrets, especially when the case wears at both of them.  A series of missing scenes from Dial M For Murder,
1. x plus one

A little note before we start: I confess, this started as a post-ep for an episode that I didn't _love_ ... a few things sort of didn't sit right with me, most importantly the 'what's your number' conversation. So I somewhat wrote this to make the comment on women and sex that I _wished_ the episode had made. And no lie, there are feelings and such, but it's at least 40% literary pornography. So _ordinarily_ I wouldn't post it here, because there's this policy about not posting explicit things, so I like to dilute the sex scenes with err, plot and stuff. BUT for whatever reason my mind made up a sequel post_ Dial M For Murder_ which picks up directly after this, so here, have chapter one. Enjoy or excuse the smut as you please. Next chapter to follow soon. (I hope tonight, but it might be tomorrow. _le sigh_ my post-eps always seem to be a week late these days.)

* * *

><p><strong>chapter one: x plus one.<strong>

As it turns out, Ryan and Jenny's wedding is full of pleasant surprises.

For one, Beckett knows _all_ the words to One Week by the Barenaked Ladies and _several _Will Smith songs.

For another... _well_.

.

.

After the bride and groom take their leave and Lanie and Esposito get far too close on the dance floor (so for Castle and Beckett, it's less _dancing_, more _spectator sport_), they retreat to the bar and then the edges of the room.

He's standing at her back, and they haven't been speaking, but it's not uncomfortable silence. Still, he breaks it. (Because he's _Castle_.)

"Back to an earlier conversation," he says, far closer to her ear than she expects or he _should _be, and that's a testament to the hour and the open bar. "If you wanted to tell me, anything, I'd want to know."

She sucks in a breath, can tell it's something he's been thinking on for a while, turns to look at him over her shoulder. "What?"

"Before, when you asked me if I'd want to know about all the people you'd slept with..."

"Seriously? You want my number?"

He shrugs. "Well. I meant more _generally_, but the principle applies. I want to know. You."

_You don't know me_. She bites her lip at the memory of those words, long ago now, and a lie when she said them, even less true now. "You do," she says.

"Not everything."

"I'm not telling you the number."

"This wasn't really about that. But now you've made me even _more_curious."

"Too bad."

"Come on Beckett. You must have a reason not to tell. At least tell me _that_."

She rolls her eyes. "I don't know Castle."

"You know it wouldn't matter what it was." He runs his thumb along the inside of her wrist, comfort and shock at the same time, because she didn't know his hands were so close to touching her. And then the other is resting on her hip. She lets her eyes close for a brief second, savours the way her heart accelerates and she can sense the weight of him behind her.

"No." She smiles, twists to look at him over her shoulder. "I don't _know_. Really Castle, who _counts_? I think that's missing the point of sex entirely."

He blinks. She's really too close to be throwing around words like 'sex', and what he should do is press her for her opinion on what the _point_of sex is, but instead he gapes a moment longer than is dignified, watches her glee at it, and manages to play Devil's advocate.

"Well, I mean, I take your point, but one could still ... estimate."

"That doesn't seem fair." Beckett is far too amused at his expense, and he can tell she's holding onto a retort that's going to have him guessing and guessing because when it comes to curiosity he's a cat with nine lives.

"Why not?"

"Well, what about all the times I've _forgotten_?"

"See, there you go again with the _all_. And what do you mean, forgotten?"

"Don't look at me like that. Castle, how long have you been having sex? Twenty, twenty five years? You're honestly telling me that you remember every single person you've ever slept with? Surely, some occasions have been less than memorable. And what _counts _as sex anyway? Because there's more than one way to do it, and which ones count and which ones don't? Mouths? Hands? And don't say count by orgasms, because those numbers don't necessarily correlate."

She watches his face change, increasingly in over his depth until she says _orgasms_and then it's his mouth that's the big O. Beckett presses her lips together in her mirth and gives him a _serves you right _look.

All of her is sparking off him though; this kind of repartee has always been the easiest way for someone to insinuate themselves into her bed. Or a handy hard surface.

Her hands find his, tug him backwards until she's leaning against the wall, face in shadows, extending a heel out to find his shin. She smirks at him, eyes thick with lashes, hair in her face, framing the amused curl of her lips.

In the face of that _look_, which would be unmistakable if it was anyone but Beckett, anyone but this gloriously frustrating woman who he can never truly read because all his feelings get in the way, he recovers quickly enough. "So you're saying you don't _have _a number?"

"Everybody has one." Her eyes latch onto his and watch as he's distracted by her tongue wetting her lips. "I'm just saying." Her hand has somehow started wondering along his shirt to play with the end of his tie, pulling it out in between them, silk sliding through her fingers. "That I'm not going to waste a second of my life calculating mine."

"Let x be the number," he jokes, completely unsure, because now she's tugging at his tie and leaning into the wall and smiling her champagne smile. He goes though, and when they're forehead to forehead she sighs, eyes on his mouth, lips so close he can feel the hint of them.

"Relax Castle. I can hear you over-thinking it."

"Someone probably should," he whispers back, breath ghosting between them, nose resting against hers.

She closes her eyes and hums it. "Mmm, no, don't. It doesn't always have to mean everything."

"So the value of x is more than one."

She nods. "x is a good number."

"Sure."

"I mean, a healthy number."

"I'll believe it."

(Because anyone would be _crazy_not to want her, to get this close and not kiss her, but for some reason he doesn't. It's not just because he loves her too much to fuck it up, it's not just because the first move has always been hers. It's somewhere between enjoying the anticipation and fear.)

"Because I _like sex_ Castle, I really really do."  
><em><br>Fuck_. How did he start this? He wants to go back in time and take notes so he knows how to start it again.

"Beckett are you drunk?"

For some reason, the very real possibility is only just now occurring to him. At the bar earlier there were shooters with racy names and she was matching him two-for-one.

"Not enough. And I'm not looking for an excuse."

She breathes and he feels it and he doesn't wonder once why they're not already kissing. The things they don't do, hint at, have always seemed unimportant in the face of the thrill of expectation, of her conversation. He could talk to her for hours, wind her tighter, let her do the same.

He lets his palm flatten against the wall, leans into her.

"I want this," she says, a small but confident voice. "Don't you?"  
><em><br>Yes yes yes._

He swallows. "Not by halves."

Her eyes widen, fix on him, and she brings her hand up to trail her thumb along his cheek. "There's a ways to go between here and there."

Castle knows exactly what she means because they're at a wedding, and it would be impossible for the thought not to occur to him. But she's right - usually is - as much as he wants the ending, there's a story yet to unfold. And rushing to the epilogue isn't what he wants. He's written for long enough to know that the first draft is never the best one.

"I know that."

"But we have to start somewhere."

"And this is the place to start?"

"Well. We're picking up in the middle, in a way. Where else would we start?"

"Coffee? Dinner and a movie?"

She laughs, nods her head to run her nose over his, hooks her free hand around the waistband of his pants and pulls him closer. "I can't imagine sitting across a table from you and making small talk."

Her thumb flicks out and presses his shirt against his skin and it's the smallest of gestures, it has no right to distract him from his argument entirely, but it does. And she's running a stockinged foot along the back of his calf, _slowly_, and he realises his fingers span the curve of her waist. He maps it absently as she turns her head, edges her mouth towards his ear.

"It's the only thing I want to change," she says, suddenly feeling small at the unexpected truth that escapes her. She's been working on honesty, on letting herself want things, on appreciating the good in her life, and it's not entirely spontaneous; if she's honest, she's been thinking it over for weeks now, been thinking that this step is long overdue, that she's been letting something simple be complicated. But where she meant to fall back on innuendo, on something familiar, she's instead said something so unintentionally revealing that now she feels naked in the other sense, the way she doesn't want to.

He pulls back to see all of her, to watch the way she bites into her lip to spite it for running away from her. "Kate."

She nods, mute, sees it there in the light reflecting off his eyes, _hope_.

His hand runs along her side, pleasant tremors in its wake. "So, hypothetically, we sleep together... and then what?"

The shrug is small. Beckett presses her hips into his, bones on bones with belt in between them. "What else _would _change Castle?"

Because it's true. What else would they add? They already have trust, commitment, friendship, _love_.

"Why now?"

"Honestly?" she asks.

"The answer is always yes. I meant it. You want to tell me, I want to know."

"I'm wearing matching underwear."

He looks at her, like he's not sure if it's a joke, like he's not sure if there should be a better reason.

"It's gotta happen sometime," she whispers. That should be revelation enough to leave him reeling, but she continues before he really has a chance to process the magnitude of the shock. "And this seemed as good a time as any. This dress is difficult to get in and out of alone."

She frowns at him suddenly. "Why are you so unsure about me?"

That's not the problem. He can't believe that she doesn't understand. The problem is that he's too sure.

"That's not it at all." Everything he means is right there under his words.

She's sliding her fingers along his tie again, knuckles gracing his shirt, and all of this must be pretence because they still haven't moved apart, he's still pinning her exactly where she wants to be pinned. His hand has never left her body and it's getting braver, brushing towards the side of her breast. The free hand at her side catches it and tugs it up, over her dress, until he's palming her chest and staring at his hand and her hand and thinking that all the words don't matter, that even if he fucks it up beyond belief they'll always be this moment that she let him feel her up at Ryan and Jenny's wedding. (He still can't decide whether it's their Paris or their Waterloo.)

She gasps when he presses two layers of fabric between the pad of this thumb and her nipple.

"Castle." She groans it out, fists her hand around his tie and pulls him to her mouth and works her tongue against his until breathless doesn't even begin to cover it.

All of her is hot. She curls her heel against the wall, brings her knee up to brace his thigh, breathes, her chest rising and falling into his hand.

"If we don't," she says, "If it's not spontaneous, we'll just build it up and up and then the pressure will take the fun out of it."

He thinks back to her earlier, all hooded eyes and _I really, really like sex_.

And the memory of her mouth on his mouth is too recent for him to really believe anything could take the fun out of her.

"The circumstances might have already conspired against you there." He nods his head towards his shoulder and beyond it, to where the happy couple's guests are still dancing.

"After your experience with both, I'd have thought you knew the difference between a proposition and a proposal Castle."

"Oh, I'm not talking about me."

"I've also experienced both," she tells him. "And I'm well aware of the difference."

He waits for another layer to fall from the Beckett onion.

And it does.

"Will asked, when he got the promotion. Not with a ring or anything. But I'd have been crazy to say yes for more important reasons." She nudges his shin with her foot again. "More importantly, don't play Freud on me. Maybe I'm just a lonely thirty something at a wedding. The great Rick Castle's type, by the tabloids' estimation."

"Beckett. You know they'll print anything."

She quirks her brow. "Since we were talking numbers, you'll have a hard time convincing me you're in the single digits."

"Well, _no_. But." He pauses, exasperated by the need to explain it all away, to be someone worthy of her instead of ... him, the old him. It's someone he barely remembers being now. "The tales might be greatly exaggerated."

"I know. I always have. Well," she corrects, "Not always. But it didn't take long."

She smiles, and there's a victory in it and he presses, like they both know he will.

"What was my tell?"

"Really? Even on our second case together you were telling me about all the time you spent with your daughter in the park. It was Alexis. I don't doubt that you never wanted for female company, but." She shrugs. "I also don't doubt that Alexis always came first."

"Mostly." He steps back, finds her hands and holds them. "You really knew that, even back then?"

"I know it hasn't escaped your notice that I'm a detective." She smiles, really smiles, nostalgic and affectionate and for him. "Yeah, I knew."

"Did it make you want me?" He waggles his eyebrows at her and she rolls her eyes in return.

But then she fixes them on him, relishes the way the air moves out of her, how she turns the word off her tongue, low and seductive. "Maybe." She grips his hands, stands up off the wall and leans closer. "Show me what would've happened, that first case, if I'd said yes."

"And tomorrow?"

She wants to smirk, wants to say _wait and see _but she recognises the need for reassurance. After the year they've had, after how she's kept her distance, she feels she owes him that. "If tonight we start my way then tomorrow we can try yours. I seem to remember something about owing you a hundred coffees."

.

.

They're quiet when they leave the noise of the reception behind them. It's going on midnight, nearly Monday morning. She should be thinking about organising herself for the week ahead, about Craig Ferguson or a book, about sleep. Instead she allows herself a tiny thrill of ... anticipation as she zips her coat, shoves her hands in the pockets, lets him wind the scarf she brought with her around her neck.

She twists her arms to pull her hair free of it and meets his hands.

The other kisses (the _two_ other kisses, not that he's counting now that he knows she's definitely not) have been heated, but this is quiet, a moment stolen, of warm before the cold of the street and of ..._tomorrow_. He can't help but think it. For a muse, she sometimes makes him a bit of a hack.

Beckett blinks at him and he realises he's staring, that she's pulled back and is standing straight, not leaning forward, on her heels, that her hands are in her pockets.

She still tastes of amaretto.

"Okay?" she asks, tilting her head slightly, curls sliding over her shoulder.

He nods, lets his shoulder bump against hers as they brave the chill in the street.

The air is brisk but not truly cold; it's been an unusually mild winter. She knows it's coincidence, knows that it's ridiculous to think that it's some cosmic metaphor but the truth is that this year she didn't feel like winter, because for the first time in a long time she feels like she's emerging from a long hibernation.

The person she once was is waking up, letting her do this, be measured in her recklessness but take the risk just the same.

What Royce wrote, in May, about risking our hearts being why we're alive, it might be true. But it might be just as true that sometimes it's not a risk. She's always been careful where she places her faith, doesn't believe in magic, the God of churches, fate. But she does believe in him. When she said it that day in February she didn't know how deep a truth it was.

It's been a fight to trust in that belief, but she's been holding her breath with the fact that she does for too long. She lets it out as they sit at opposite sides of the backseat of a cab, her fingers curled around leather that has seen many sins, her face upturned to the city, its lights and its endless energy.

He's watching her, she can tell, puzzling over her. One day she might give him the missing piece but not tonight.

She curls her fingers, and brings them to her mouth, elbow resting against the arm rest, and smiles at him. "I'm sure too."

He nods, barely but he smiles too and she wonders when that became something that reminds her so fiercely that she's alive.

It's six blocks to her apartment and she can feel the silence settling over them like a spell, turning them to stone. She needs to break it, needs the levity of _before_, of want, but she's not sure how, whether they can. Maybe he was right about baggage, that it'll have weight, if not because of the night then because of all the nights that have come before, the year, their growing history.

Now they are well and truly in limbo, more so than before. There has to be a step, forward or back. (She promised herself she would choose forward.)

She scoots across, curls her hand around his knee. The response on his face is reassurance enough. He tucks her beneath an arm and she rests her head on his shoulder and she thinks this version of limbo is_nice_, an inch, a baby step, a natural evolution from what they were before. And if this is all she's managed, more of her cards on the table and this new kind of intimacy, then that's okay. The others will follow.

She's sure of it.

.

.

In the elevator, her keys dangle from her hand like percussion when she kisses him. All the times she has wanted to but stopped herself are there in that confined space with her and it's all pressure, all a lack of need for words and a need for air. His hands find her hair like they've always belonged there and she wishes they were everywhere they're not.

.

.

Beckett finally manages to open her door. Sometimes it has a habit of sticking and tonight her fingers are impatient. He's running his hand along the seam of her dress and breathing on her neck but she hears him thinking. When they're on the other side of the door and she's locked it behind them, she leans against it.

He looks like he's on the verge of pacing and suddenly they've adopted the same positions they did that night in May, when they fought over her mother's murder, the way she had back then of losing herself in the past. The echo of that stand off hits her and suddenly she understands how, after everything that has been said, done, he can still be apprehensive.

"Castle."

He swallows but he turns towards her, waits for the order he knows is coming.

She's a ghost of the Kate Beckett he expects, gentle. "Come here."

Like he always has, even against his better judgement, he goes when she asks him to.

Her thumbs are suddenly smooth over his cheeks, and she's kissing him again but it's not demanding, heated yes, but ... languid. She's telling him there is time and he realises, for the first time, that he hasn't truly believed that this is a luxury they can afford since she was dying in the cemetery.

"The writer's mind is always turning." Her smile is familiar, all warmth and teasing. "Tell me how I switch gears."

"Mixing up your metaphors," he observes. "Beckett, I'm disappointed."

"Mmm, no you're not," she asserts, confident but thoughtful. "You're too distracted to be disappointed. It's throwing me off my game a little."

"You've never needed _game_."

"True. That's the difference between men and women. Men approach sex like they're going to war, it's all _strategies _and cons-"

"- and women don't have to."

"Men don't either." She lets her hands come down to his shoulders, thumbs along to his collar. "In truth all they really have to do is _ask_. But you know that."

"Well. You're a detective. It must not have escaped your notice that I enjoy a good conversation."

She hums, hooks her leg around his and feels the protest of her skirt. "You're still trying to figure out why."

"You're not just a lonely single thirty something at a wedding," he says. "For one, you're hardly thirty-something. For another, you'd never think of yourself that way. It's too... Garry Marshall."

"True." She leans all of her weight against the wall. "There are lots of reasons. Mostly." She's letting her fingers creep over his buttons, toying with the idea of undoing them. One falls open without her trying. "I didn't want to go home alone. But I would've, if it wasn't with you."

(She's not drunk enough for this much honesty, but now she's drunk on honesty itself, everything flooding out once the dam walls have broken. It's exhilarating in its own way.)

He's been floored over and over, and this is no exception. Beckett waits, patient. The first thought that occurs to him is that he doesn't know how far to push. The second is that it's safe to let her lead. Usually he pushes because it's the only way she gives. But that's less and less true. He has been noticing it of late. He reaches out, pushes some of the hair that has escaped the confines of her ear back into place.

"So it's about sex." Statement, not question, even though he_is_asking.

She answers with a question even though she's stating. "Hasn't it always been?"

That's true. "In part."

There's air between their lips and it's conducting.

"So." She's staring him down. "What else is there?"

"After the signing, when we talked. You said that you wouldn't be able to have the relationship you wanted until we solved your mother's case."

"The truth is we might never solve it," she says.

"Who are you and what have you done with Beckett?"

She shakes her head. "I'm right here. It's me. I'm just... tired of arbitrary deadlines."

"So?"

Her hands have fisted around his jacket and they're pulling him towards her. "So be x plus one."

Their hips bump when she kisses him, sighing against his mouth when his hands find her back, slide lower, hold her against him.

He mumbles it, lips still moving over hers. "Okay." She steals it from him, teeth catching his lower lip, tongue smoothing over where they have been. He says it again. "Okay."

.

.

There's a mirror above the table in her hall. She's standing in front of it, her hair pulled to one side, arms rearranged and searching for her zipper. They're staring at each other in the glass.

"Help me out of it." All demands. He finds few complaints.

The zip gives way with a purr and he watches the dress unfurl, reveal the angles of her shoulder blades, the curve of her back, the hard lines of her spine. Castle runs his palm over her skin, up, from the end of the zipper where the hint of black, sensible but sheer has him itching to see more of it, up, slowly. She watches him in the mirror, how he's looking at her when he touches her and it's an old want growing more demanding between her legs.

He pauses at the clasp of her bra but hesitates and moves up, further still, until his hands rest on her shoulders. His eyes are on hers again. She reaches up and pushes his hands away, slides the sleeves down her arms and lets the dress fall to the floor.

Then she's standing there, mostly undressed in her underwear and her heels. She kicks of the shoes, drops precious inches in height so his mouth is perfectly poised to tongue her naked shoulder.

His fingers seek the scar though and she knows he's bracing himself to look. Beckett reaches up and grips his fingers when he finds it, runs the pad of a finger over her uneven, healed flesh. She traps his hand there, against her chest.

"Most of the time, I don't notice it."

He maps its edges, staring at it in the mirror. "I thought it would be bigger," he confesses.

"So did I." She drops her hands to her sides, lets his go unguided. "I still can't really believe that they managed to repair so much damage and this is the only evidence of it."

"Not the only evidence." He's thinking, of course, of nightmares, hyper vigilance, all the ways the shooting still leaves its mark on their lives.

He hates the phrase _their eyes lock _but it fits this moment.

She considers her response. "Like everything else, it's fading," is what she finally decides on. "Even by September, it'd changed a lot."

"You're not wearing the ring," he observes as his fingers skim beneath the underwire of her bra.

"Or the watch." She nods. "It's zipped into a pocket of my clutch. Didn't match the outfit."

He bumps her up against the table and everything on it pitches forward then back. She reaches out to steady a vase and then she twists around to face him, slides up onto the refurbished wooden surface. It's raw wood where years of old paint have been sanded off; she's been meaning to get around to lacquering it for months. Her fingers find a groove in the grain and she lets her feet swing out to catch his, slip against the leg of his pants.

"What are you thinking?" she asks, when he steps closer and she can run her hands over his chest, tug free the knot of his tie.

He watches her hands as they work, practiced, thinks back to their earlier conversation about healthy numbers and wonders if she used to be awkward. He can't truly imagine it, and he suddenly wishes that he could have known her forever, have seen all the parts of her life that he's missed.

Castle doesn't tell her any of that, just runs his hands from his shoulders down to her arms, stilling them as her fingers dispense with the last of his buttons, her palm pressing flat against his stomach. It's cold; he steels himself to it.

"Nothing," he says, then jokes. "You're mostly naked Beckett. I'm not sure I'm capable of _thought_."

She pulls their lips together by the open edges of his shirt, smiling into it, amused, and kisses him while both pairs of hands wander. She's tasked hers with his belt, back catching at the wall, legs crossed around his body, keeping him where she wants him. One of his finds the curve of her neck, traces the lines he finds, touch feathering out from his thumb, pressed to the tip of her chin. The other is warm at her side, heavy against her hip.

"Liar," she breathes, eyes opening enough for her to glance up at him from beneath her lashes. Her mouth gets an appraising curl to it. "You're thinking."

"I-"

She gives him a wicked smile when she palms at the front of his trousers, well and truly done undoing his belt, toying with the idea of starting on his fly. And then he really does lose his train of thought, momentarily, feels his hips reflexively start towards hers and her hand and the wood.

He lets his fingers rest against her thigh, pinning her leg and her hip against the hard surface. Her lips curve as her eyes assess the situation between their bodies and then she sighs, lets her eyes flick closed, all eyelashes. "You were saying?"

And she's not playing fair so he won't either. "I was thinking about all the times you've done this _before_."

Her fingers skirt along silk inside his pants and then she's pressing her palm flat against him, enjoying the pull of air her touch inspires, him hard, pressing back into her hand.

"Yeah?" she says, all air. She looks up, meets his eyes, feels the heat of them wreak havoc through her. "Why?"

_Oh_. He sees it, how she absolutely is getting off on the idea of him thinking about that, and he leans forward to talk to her ear. "Because, that means you know what you _like_."

She kisses his cheek, an afterthought and pushes him backwards. "Take off your shoes."

He does, toe to heel, nudges them aside, but he doesn't back off, runs his hands up over her chest and around to unclasp her bra and keeps moving his mouth against her ear. "You like to tell people what you want." He states it, like fact, but maybe that's because she's nodding along as he talks, canting her hips so he can pull off her underwear.

"Not people Castle," she says, as she throws her bra in the general direction of her dress and he slides her underwear free, the requisite distance between them. He removes the rest of his clothes too and they both _breathe _at each other, naked and curious and it's a little strange, but not awkward. When he's standing between her knees again, she draws him closer, presses her heel into the back of his thigh and runs her hands up his chest. "You."

When she finishes the sentence, he's almost forgotten the start of it because she's fisting her hand around his erection, drawing him into her, and her teeth in her lip as she does, silencing gasps.

One of her thumbs is brushing the skin behind his ear, mouth inches from his and she says, wicked. "Do you want me to tell you what I like?"

He nods but then their mouths are pressed together, all tongues, and so she has to gasp it between kisses, all _do this_ and _do that_ and _yes put your thumb there_. (His fingers are curled around her hip and his thumb is still between her legs and she works her hips against it, meeting his, an equal partnership, like always.)

It might be seconds or it might be minutes - time seems irrelevant - but she's impatient for more of it, tells him that in his ear, hot, tongue licking out to taste his jaw. And then she's all erratic in her movements and there's not words so much as _sounds_. He sinks into her and waits, thumb pressing harder and it shouldn't work (it's not what she _likes _per se), but it does. She lets her head fall against the wall and her mouth open, all out of vocalising, and she breathes, mute.

When she can speak again she says, "Do that for me. I want to feel it."

And then she rocks her hips against his and says several things that he wishes weren't too dirty to put in his next novel, because as much as he wants it just for him, he wants to celebrate her and share her with the world and this version of her, this is ... overwhelming.

He collapses against her, kisses her shoulder and feels her arms come up to hold him there, hands stroking his neck, laughter soft in his ear. It makes her breasts move against his chest and he strokes his fingers along her hip and can't find a thing to say except, "Beckett."

"Normally I'd prefer Kate," she tells him, "But on you, I like Beckett."

"Mmm. Kate."

"Actually, on you, I like most things."

"Good to know."

"Don't make me regret I said it Castle."

(She doesn't actually regret anything.)

.

.

The dining table is close enough not to be a journey from the door. He's sitting in a chair and she's sitting on the table top and the obvious joke isn't lost on her, when he braces his hands on her thighs and bows his head between her legs, but the flat of his tongue distracts her from it.

He lets it rest there, breath tickling against her thigh, no movement, until she can hardly stand it. And then he sucks, light at first, but harder, until she jerks forward and pushes back on his shoulder.

When he pulls back to look at her, she's already smoothing her fingers through his hair. "Too much," she says, guides him back, lets her eyes slip closed as he teases her with the tip of his tongue. The half-embarrassed half-_because it's so surreal _laugh becomes a groan becomes a hum as it vibrates out of her. And she shakes forward but his hands push her back and that sends a thrill through her.

Castle moves his fingers against her thigh and she can sense his intention but she braces her weight on one hand and presses his flat against her. It's too soon after sex for _that_to be comfortable, and it's not necessary _at all_ because he's tonguing her with ever-increasing pressure and then, it's light again. _Tease_. But somehow she always knew that's how it would be.

(And in truth, she doesn't mind at all.)

He has _the_ spot but he loses it and she groans out her frustration. "No, just a little bit, up, yes, _there_."

Her appreciation is audible.

Beckett's knuckles are curled around the edge of the table, white from the exertion, but she releases one, brings her hand to her chest to palm at her breast and when she looks down, he's watching her. It's disbelief at the reality of the moment and _want_ that she sees there, a little bit animal, the adoration that she usually sees replaced with a look that is all sex, all on him because of her and that, _that_is too much.

She swears a little, and he _grins_ and she _feels_it.

Everything tenses then relaxes, relief and pleasure and _yes_, _yes_, _yes _in waves.

She falls back on her wrists and then her elbows, table hard beneath her back and he props his chin up on her thigh, face a mess with her.

They eye each other.

"We're running out of hard surfaces," he says.

Which is a lie, she's counting in her head and she thinks there's the kitchen counter and the floor and any one of the four walls of her living room, but she laughs anyway at the joke.

"My shower wall is tiled," she replies, reaching up to push her damp hair from her forehead.

He holds out his hand and she grabs it, but doesn't trust her legs. When she sits up, her head spins a little, the last of alcohol and the lethargic flow of her blood as her heart catches its breath after racing.

Castle scoots the chair forward and she feels the sudden need to hug him, air catching the sheen covering her skin and raising goosebumps, palm stroking his hair, holding his turned head flat against her stomach.

His mouth is warm against her skin when he kisses it, and her body remembers it between her legs.

She's glad he doesn't spoil the moment with words though. The strength, the intensity of the connection is beyond them anyway and she thinks _this is why numbers don't matter_ because really, whatever has come before, this is what matters _now_.

.

.

Her hair is wet against the pillow and smells like her shampoo, familiar and comforting but somehow different up close and fresh, stronger, more fruit. They both smell like her soap. She watches from beneath her eyelashes as he takes her hand, raises it to his lips, both of them all wonder at the moment.

"I want to say something," he says. "I feel like I should."

"What is there to say?" she asks, heart panicking a little at the thought because she's never been good at this part, at words to match intimacy.

"One day, a great deal I imagine," he says, dropping her fingers, running his along her shoulder.

"But not now," she surmises, from the hint in his tone.

Castle yawns. "No. Not now. It's enough, for now."

"Thank you," she whispers, quiet, closing her eyes, leaning forward so her nose touches his then retreating further, to the wet patch in her pillow.

"For what?"

_Waiting_. It's what she should say, it's what she wants to say. But she jokes instead, twists her limbs to flip the pillow over and smoothing it under her palms. She grins. "A more interesting lesson in basic algebra than I've ever had before."

"Does that imply what I think it means?"

She hums. "I don't know Castle. Make of it what you will."

His hand finds a place to rest over her hip. "You know, I enjoy this kind of math."

"Castle?"

"Yes?"

"Sleep."

He does, eventually.

.

.

When she wakes, there's light streaming through the curtains she forgot to draw properly and he's breathing against her neck, arm curled around her stomach, fingers resting against her skin beneath the oversized shirt she slept in.

There's no moment of disorientation. She knows exactly where they are and why he's here and she curls her toes against her sheet as she stretches out her legs, satisfied with the memory.

The hand against her stomach flexes and retreats to her hip and then he's awake, kissing her shoulder. "Much better when we haven't been drugged," he tells her.

She nods. "And without the cuffs."

"I don't know about _that_." He fits himself neatly around her back, lets his hand dip from the curve of her hip down along her thigh. "I've decided that I like being your plus one Beckett."

"Mmm." She burrows into the pillow, pushes off the covers, suddenly too warm with him crowding her. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were just in it for the perks."

"But you do." Castle closes his eyes, pauses. "Know better."

He can tell she's smiling when she reaches down and links her fingers through his at her hip. "I do."

Beckett's not one for laying about though. She squeezes his hand then drops it, sits up. He watches as she untangles what she can of her hair with her fingers and smooths it down. When her toes are curling into the carpet, she stares at her feet and takes a deep breath and settles on the familiar instead of all the other words she knows she'll have to say, one day, soon.

"Coffee?"

"Sure."

At the doorframe, she looks at him over her shoulder. "One down, ninety nine to go."

He smirks. "But who's counting?"


	2. one plus one

A little note from me first: Wow! Thank you guys. I woke up to like 30 e-mails this morning from story alerts and favourites and _I was not expecting that at all_ - seriously. I hope this doesn't disappoint you. Particularly all of you who commented and said absolutely _lovely_ things about the sex, about how it wasn't gratuitous and such. I started to feel a little bit like there was no way I could follow up on that. But thank you thank you thank you. And alas, this was all-but-done, so I pushed through. Hope you enjoy it! There is plot now... apparently. This is new for me. (There is still sex though. As a warning?)

This takes place between episodes (_Til Death Do Us Part_ and _Dial M For Murder_) but the next chapter will sort of weave in with canon.

* * *

><p><strong>chapter two: one plus one.<strong>

For them, reality comes far too soon.

He leaves her with two empty mugs just before eight in the morning, which is still new when he steps out onto the street, wet with dawn. There's nothing out of place, just the start of an ordinary day, suits on the sidewalk already, New York traffic blaring in all its glory and the sun, starting to hint at clearing away the clouds. The mark her teeth made on his shoulder and his coffee cup in her apartment are the only signs that it ever happened.

Somehow he expected more to be different.

.

.

Alexis is waiting for him in the kitchen with one hand braced on her hip and greets him with a teasing, "You missed curfew."

"Am I grounded?"

"Depends."

She's scrutinizing him in a way that reminds him of Beckett at crime scenes and he thinks it's going to be a long day of _that_, things that remind him of Beckett; Beckett at crime scenes, Beckett at weddings, Beckett naked licking water from his shoulder.

"Where were you?" his daughter asks.

It'd be easy to tell her there was a case, but the lie would spiral quickly, because their cases go on for days and he can't really pretend to be coming and going when he's not. Besides, they skirt the issue, but she's old enough to fill in the blanks when it comes to sex. And he doesn't lie to her, wouldn't even consider it except that this might be too new to share. He does anyway.

He sighs, runs his hand over his face. These, perhaps, are the consequences. "With Kate."

His beautiful, intelligent, funny daughter infers a lot from his use of Beckett's first name. She comes over and hugs him and says, "Well then, I suppose she kept you out of trouble."

Alexis still fits under his chin; he rests it atop her head. "She did."

"Are you okay?"

"I think so."

His daughter steps back and beams, one of the smiles that surprises him with how much he loves her. "Good. I have to go, I'm late already."

"Sorry to keep you waiting."

She laughs and pauses at the door, turns back and says, impishly. "I'll remind you of it when I do it to you."

He starts to call after her, but the door closes and there's no point.

Martha swans in and he pouts. "They grow up far too soon."

"Not in your case," she teases, sets a mug down in front of him and gives him a knowing look.

"Mother, stop asking."

"I'm not."

"You are, with your eyes."

(There's rarely a time when she's not reminding him that she's an actress and the face she's giving him is all high drama.)

"Well, spare the details -"

"Why? You never do."

She slaps his arm and sits beside him. "I don't need to know a thing except that you're happy."

As he says it, he realises it's true. Whatever else, whatever the weight of it, whatever she wants but doesn't want, he is … hopeful. He thinks maybe he should've learned by now, should be more cautious in his optimism, but he hasn't, isn't, can't be.

"I am."

His mother smiles, hugs his shoulders. "Good."

.

.

It takes Beckett until midday to panic, which she does, calmly and quietly, over the last of the paperwork from the Bailey case until five thirty five precisely.

Monday nights mean Doctor Burke's office. It takes her half an hour to get across town in peak hour traffic and only slightly less to do it on the overcrowded subway. This particular Monday evening, she chooses the subway because being pressed up against an overweight drunk and a stockbroker who's staring down her shirt is still better than being alone with her thoughts. The train lurches from stop to stop and all its passengers are forced to dance. Her hand is inside her coat, on her service piece, the badge at her hip digging into skin under the weight of a woman carrying a screaming, crying child.

Beckett is jealous of the kid.

She wants to lean over and tell him that she knows, it sucks, and he's lucky because he's still allowed to cry about it in public. The next stop is hers though, and she escapes the quickly staling air without letting the _enjoy it kid_ that she's thinking pass her lips.

The glance over her shoulder as she climbs the stairs two at a time even in heels isn't something she'll tell the therapist about even though she should. It's the first time she's had the lingering sense of being watched in months and she puts it down to the fact that tensions are running high beneath her scar today, that there are too many thoughts echoing inside her head.

In an unconscious gesture, she touches her mother's ring beneath her shirt and pushes through the double doors without looking at her reflection in the glass. Inside, the carpet of the lobby dulls the percussion of her shoes and it's blissfully quiet. She could use a wordless, silent hour, but she knows that's not what she's here for. With a sigh, she drags her feet into the elevator and jabs the button for the fifth floor and waits.

And then does more of the same inside the small room before the smaller room beyond, where Doctor Burke will sit in one armchair and she'll sit in another and tap her heel until she figures out exactly how to say what she needs to say.

In fact, the pause isn't a long one. Words come almost immediately after they exchange greetings and the usual, symptoms, sleep, _any concerns?_ _No? How was your week?_ It's always the same, but not in a way that she begrudges. He can be businesslike, brusque when she needs it, but he always knows when to listen. She sees that today is no exception.

"My friend Ryan got married yesterday," she says.

"Oh?"

"It was a ... nice service."

Doctor Burke senses that there's a punch line. They sit there in silence for a moment, silently reading each other - they both do it for a living, just in different ways - and finally, he decides she needs to be prompted. "Milestones like that can make you think about your own life, about where you are and where you'd like to be."

"Castle," she says, and then stops, frowns a little and thinks perhaps that rather unintentionally speaks all her volumes for her, because it's where she is and where she wants to be and _yet_. "He was there. We ... talked."

"You sound like it wasn't a good conversation."

"No." She's suddenly all hands in a way she _never_ is outside these walls, all palms over fists and twitching fingers. "That's not it at all, it _was_, we ... _I_ said... well, that's the problem I seem to be having. The more I think about it, the more I think that I didn't really say anything at all."

"But it was a conversation that you felt you should mention. Why?"

"We slept together." There's always a point where she breaks and honesty comes. This time she sounds impatient with it because there are things she wishes he could guess without her having to say them.

Doctor Burke's hands are folded and the steeple of his fingers is supporting his chin.

Beckett continues before he can comment; he's on the verge of it and she's not quite sure she's ready to hear whatever it is he has to say. She chooses how she frames it, because the truth - that she'd been four drinks down and really, _really_ wanted sex - doesn't quite sound as _good_ as she'd like. (And besides, that fact doesn't change the others, that she chose _him_, that she promised him it was a _start_. They were always going to need a catalyst for change. Better it be this, normal one, than a bullet or a hostage negotiation or a tiger in a basement.)

"Because I just... found myself wondering why we didn't before. I'm all out of reasons."

"So you don't have doubts?"

She swallows and meets his eye and can tell she's caught. "We talked before-" (and during, but that doesn't seem relevant, it's just distracting her with the memory of it) "- he said he didn't want to do it by halves."

"What did you want? What do you want?"

"_That_," she says. "I want all of it. I have for a long time. I told you... that the reason I asked him to wait was because I didn't want to do what I always have before. I didn't want to make a complete mess of it because I-" she pauses, selects her words carefully, "I don't want that for him."

"And that's what I'm asking, what you _do_ want."

"Everything," she says, the agitation that was fuelling and growing with her last words falling still at this, the quietest truth, which she is as sure of now as she was last night, and the night before, and the night before that. In fact, she can't remember not being sure. She knows, intellectually, that she wasn't and not that long ago but her memory plays tricks. Her hands are at her elbows and she hugs them against her body. "I want the last chapter of the book."

"The happy ending?"

"No." She pinches her sweater to a point where her arm curls, picks at the fabric. "A life can never be entirely happy."

"For better, for worse."

She nods. "Maybe not that, exactly, but something like it."

"But you're afraid." He leaves the sentence hanging, waits for her to finish it her own way.

"Not like I was. Because I'm not like I was, then."

"No." Doctor Burke smiles at her. "No, you've made a lot of progress."

(It's been a combination of pills to help her sleep and breathing exercises and CBT, talking, facing things she's been putting off for a long time.)

"It feels like a normal, healthy amount of fear." Because surely anybody in her position would feel _some_ apprehension, have some reservations. She came to love him so slowly that he's already _in_ every aspect of her life and she'd feel the loss of him, acutely, chronically. "The thing is, for so long, it's been two steps forward, one step back with us. Now we've taken _this_ step, I don't know how to not step back."

"It's not something you can undo."

"I don't want to." Her hands twist around on themselves but then she rests. There's a hint of her sense of humour in it, because she's well aware of how it sounds, and if it were Castle, she'd add an eyebrow and breathe it over his ear, make him wonder. But it's the therapist, and they both know she's not talking about sex anyway. "It was _good_."

"Can I offer some advice?" he asks, though given his exorbitant hourly rate it's mostly rhetorical. She's not paying him for nothing.

Still, Beckett nods.

"You keep telling me what you don't want. Focus on what you _do _want. That's why you step back, because you're not looking ahead."

Sometimes, it's worth every cent.

.

.

He answers her call on the first ring, like he's been waiting all day with his finger poised. She feels a little guilty about _that_.

"Hey," she breathes into the phone, drawing her coat closed against the crisp air. She's pacing in the street without deciding on one direction or another, back or forward, but she makes herself stop. Without motion to ward off the cold, huddled closer to the warm air escaping the lobby of the building as people come and go, she waits.

"Hi," he says, and there's a clatter in the background, Alexis' voice, then quiet. "Sorry. We were just finishing up in the kitchen."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Beckett closes her eyes, leans back against the wall behind her and wonders why it's so awkward. They talk like this a lot - she's always ringing at inopportune moments when they have a case - so she doesn't know why it's suddenly so hard when they don't.

But this is the way forward, this is the first step towards what she wants, so she breathes, in and out, three seconds each time and when she opens her eyes, it's to the realisation that each step is same as the first step, that that's the nature of motion, it's just that with time it will get easier, practiced, become habit, inertia. Maybe it has been for a long time.

"No. I ... wanted to talk to you."

"I did too." She smiles - a small, calm smile - which he hears over the line even though it's silent.

"I know," he teases. "You called. That's usually how it works."

There's a moment of nothing but the static of the line before she laughs and says, "Usually I know what to say."

"Honestly Beckett, I feel your pain. You should see the pathetic attempts at text messaging I've been drafting all day."

"A novelist, stumped by 140 characters? The perils of the information age."

He can imagine her face as she says it, all raised eyebrows and a lilting chin and winning smile.

"In my defence, too many words were the problem, not too few."

"Does that mean you have a lot to say?" The smile's still in her voice, but the laughter is gone; she's serious.

"After you," he says, then adds, devilishly, "Lately, I'm learning that it's best to let you make the first move."

The quip has something of a truth to it though. She's been wondering why he hasn't been bothering her all day by any means necessary - texts, calls, e-mails, hell, skywriting. This newer, more restrained version of him still sneaks up on her sometimes. Despite the quiet way he's been there for her since the summer, she still expects loud, still expects him to push. Maybe part of her has always wanted that. Instead, she pushes herself for him.

"Not over the phone," she says. "Can you meet me after you eat?"

"You can join us, if you want."

"Not... we need to talk first. Without an audience."

He sinks a little at that. "Okay. Where?"

"I'll pick you up. Just... let me know when you're ready."

She hangs up and he stares at the phone thinking _I've been ready for forever_ and rueing the fact that he'll never get a chance to use a line so perfect it could've been scripted.

(Still, he thinks, despite the drama, it's not quite true. She's made him ready, made him better. One day soon he thinks he'll tell her that.)

.

.

When he closes the door to the passenger side, she's drumming her hands against the wheel, parked illegally and already looking over her shoulder searching for a gap in the traffic. She finds one and then it grinds to a New York halt and she spares him a glance. There's a takeout container full of food in his hands.

"I'd have brought you flowers, but you sprung it on me," he says as he holds out leftover pasta for her inspection.

As the light changes, she gives him a look out of the corner of her eye as though she's deciding which part of the combination of gesture and words she's going to pick apart first.

"In my defence, it was Alexis' idea." Beckett doesn't believe _that_ for a second and he can tell. He continues, doing his best to look charming. "I already fished out the mushrooms for you?"

"Romance isn't dead," she finally manages to say, when she's done being a little overwhelmed by all the ways he's made a study of her in details, but she's only half-joking. Ordinary, everyday gestures of affection have always been more _her_ than the grand sweeping ones anyway.

"More importantly-" He changes the subject and when he does, she's surprised he's managed to wait so long to ask. "-where are we going?"

"Brooklyn," she says, simply, which he already knew, just as he knows that's all the answer she's going to give.

They take the Manhattan Bridge, and he watches the arches of the Brooklyn Bridge over her shoulder, studies the lights and her profile and the neutral line of her mouth and wonders.

.

.

At the top of the park, the lights of Manhattan wink at them from across the East River. She climbs up onto a picnic table and lets her feet rest against the seat, holding her hands out for the now-cold fettuccine. She actually is hungry; he knows her too well.

He sits next to her and lets her eat in silence for a few moments, until the effort of walking up the hill well and truly fades and he's left shoving his hands deep into his pockets to ward off the cold. "Why here?" he asks her.

"I don't know." She sets down the plastic container behind her and rubs her gloved hands together. "I didn't want to do this in the city. It's quieter here."

"The view doesn't hurt."

"No." She lets her elbow nudge into his side. "It doesn't."

"My spidey senses are tingling though. It's significant somehow. Tell me, how'd you find it?"

"First hit on Google."

"Seriously Beckett."

"I..." she trails off. "In the summer, after I got back from the cabin... I wandered a bit."

"Figuratively and literally?"

She nods. "Something like that. And I needed to get my strength back. This was a hill worth the effort."

"You're leaving out the most important part," he says. "That you didn't want anyone in the city to see you like that."

He sees her hesitate and then he sees her dive in, sees her resign herself to honesty and wishes just once, that she'd give it without the pause.

"No." The words are measured, careful. "I didn't. In my defence, recovery didn't bring out the best in me. I-" It hangs like her breath, light against the dark of cold and night. "I didn't want _you_ to see me like that. I thought it would be hard, for both of us."

"Probably." He stares straight ahead, past the gentle slope of Brooklyn, past the lights of the city and the haze of its lights and winter smoke and what he sees at the end of that stare, she doesn't know. "I _needed_ to see you like that. The way you were. Alive."

"Castle." She sighs. "I'm so sorry."

He waits to find the right words, something he isn't overly familiar with but has learned is best, with her. "I'm not sure there's anything to apologise for. I used to. Over the summer, I thought that it was something you didn't see in me that _was_ there, that you didn't care enough, because if you did, you would have called. But we were just at cross purposes. You needed space and I needed the opposite. It was a train wreck of a situation Kate. Don't apologise for that."

She tugs at the sleeve of his coat. "Just because there's no one wholly to blame doesn't mean I can't be sorry. You're right. It was a mess and _I_ was a mess and I never did any of it intending to hurt you. But I did. And I will always be sorry for that."

His lips twitch and she presses her lips together, amused because she can see he's thinking _that's not what you said when we met_. "Stop. I'm being serious here."

"I know." When he looks at her, she sees that he is too, in his way. He reaches over and takes her hand where it's curled around the point of his sleeve. "You still haven't told me why you brought me here."

"For the same reason I chose it in the summer," she says, "This is outside our world."

The urban jungle is bright from across a black expanse of water, all light and water, and her fingers twist around his, willing him to understand, but he already does.

He nods. "Neutral ground."

"Something like that."

"Because you have something to say."

"Don't sound so worried," she chides, falls back on humour though all of her is uncertain. "You liked what I had to say last night."

"The mood is different."

She falls against his side. "It doesn't have to be."

"Maybe it does."

The breath she takes idles before she's really done with it, and then she nods, starts. "You gave up on me."

"What?"

"In the summer. I know I didn't call. I know I gave you no reason not to. But when I went to see you, at the signing, you'd given up on me."

"No." He doesn't shake his head, doesn't sound imploring, just tells her it like it's a fact and there is no way she can argue with it. "The problem wasn't that I gave up on you. The problem was that I couldn't."

"That's not a problem."

"It was for a while. But I wasn't just mad at _you_. I was angry with everything, all of it, and the only reason for that kind of anger is pain. I've never taken to well to it. That's why I could never be a Hemmingway or a Poe. I've been accused of being drawn to other people's tragedies, and that might be true, but I'm not such a fan of my own."

"Neither am I. Yours I mean. And mine too, lately."

She's moving her feet in ridiculous high-heeled boots that come up over her jeans to just below her knee and his eyes are tracking them, their lines, the movement of her legs. He's trying not to think about them wrapped around him, but it's a hard thing to forget.

"I don't want to hurt you again," she says, finally, finding it in her to trust her voice.

"Even if I ask nicely?"

(But it's not a joke, not about sex.)

"Even if. I meant what I said last night Castle." Her teeth worry into her lip but she relaxes under the weight of his arm when he folds it around her, leans into his side. "About it being a start. It's not that I don't want things to change, because I know they will. When I said that I _didn't _want that, I wasn't being realistic or honest because I -"

She pauses to sigh and he finishes her sentence for her. "The relationship you want. You're still not sure if you can do that now."

"Not _the_ relationship I want," she corrects, quietly. The wind reaches out and swallows it but he hears her. "_This_ relationship."

"That you want?" he says, slowly, studying her.

He's smiling at her in the most _ridiculous_, infectious way that she can't help but return it, fondly exasperated. "You must know that by now."

"A start." He looks down at her. "What does that mean?"

"That I'm working on it, on everything, me, but I need to do that without a safety net. I know that you're there – you always have been Castle, even when I didn't really want you to be – so it's not that. It's not _you_ at all. It's just that I don't want you or anyone else to be the lynchpin. I have to be that for myself." She pauses, measuring his reaction to her words, distracted by his hand wandering, thumb pressing into the skin behind her ear. She finishes as he lets his fingers work under her chin, an invitation: "I don't want to need you. That's not love."

It's cold and their lips shiver together, but it's warmth that spreads through her, quieter than before but present, ever-growing. She always used to think it would be consuming, madness, abandon. But it is and it isn't. It's constant too, steady, a truth or a natural law, one plus one is two, he is, she is, they _are_. She tastes him, lets it still the rush of thoughts, feels it all lazing in her limbs and her chest and between her legs and then she's breathing and his forehead is bumping into hers and he says, "You don't _need_ anyone."

"I don't want you to give up on me," she states simply, even though it's an admission and she feels unsure, not of her words but of _his_, of what will come next. "Not again. I know I asked you to wait-"

"And I have."

"I know. I know that. But I still need you to be patient with me."

"Beckett, I would've waited forever."

"But this is different." She turns over their clasped fingers, tugs at them until he looks at her. "It's less… clear cut."

"Nothing is absolute."

"No, but just… if the area is ever too grey for you don't doubt that I am in this."

"Yeah." He stares at their hands, folded on her knee. "Me too."

.

.

Even with the heat on the entire way back to the city, his hands are still cold when they get back to her apartment, which she knows because he has her up against the door, freezing fingers inside her before she can remove both her shoes. Their coats are shrugged to the floor at their feet and she's curling up the remaining heel into the wall and pressing forward into his thumb and gasping. His teeth catch against the skin exposed by her unwound scarf and she turns her head, invites his mouth up along her jaw and then mumbles nonsense encouragement into it when he kisses her.

With clumsy fingers, she finds the zip of her boot and moves to tug it at the same time as he finds a place to press against that sends her shuddering forward. The zip pinches at her finger, catching her nail and she swears, falls forward until her faces rests against the shoulder of his shirt and keeps cursing, but it's less _no_, more _yes_. Her fingers claw at his arm, find purchase, keep her upright. She tenses, comes, slick, against his hand but he makes her body greedy. There's a fog in her limbs, at the back of her knees and creeping down her front, but under it all her pulse says _more more more_ and her hips seek it.

Inside her, his fingers still but his thumb keeps her body humming, trailing lazily up and over and _against_ and _oh_.

She falls against him entirely and he hugs her there, where they have come to rest. When her breathing slows, she pushes him back, inspecting the damage to her nail as she does. She frowns. "That really hurt."

"Need me to kiss it better?" Castle teases, trapping her hand against his chest and tugging it up to his mouth. He kisses the inside of her wrist then traces its contours with his fingers. They tap over her pulse and this, then, is love. She sees it on him and it sends her teeth into her lip, but it's not out of fear, exactly. She wants to be worthy of it.

It's a trance but she breaks it, falls back on what she knows, hums low in her throat and reaches down to properly pull off her boot and her jeans, watching as he watches with fascination. (It's a way he's always had of looking at her, lust but … curiosity. And she knows he really does want to know all of her.)

Beckett smirks, glances down at her hand skirting the front of his pants. "Isn't that my line?"

"Could be." His fingers glance along her hip as she busies her fingers with belt buckle, zipper, waistband. "But I have another idea."

"Another outlandish theory Castle?"

(She fists her hands and tugs and then he's not wearing pants, and their clothes and their shoes are making mess together.)

He slides a palm beneath her shirt, the backs of his fingers brushing against her stomach and she gives him a look as she gasps at it, like she knows exactly what that sound does to him, like _that_ does something for her.

Her nails scratch against his hip in the wake of her hand, and then she's palming at his erection.

Castle braces them against the wall so her back is flat and her hand is trapped between them, still curled around him. "Not so outlandish."

Their mouths dance, all tongues and breath licking at her cheeks and his hips jerk against her hand. It traps her against the wall. When her head thuds against it, she lets her lips linger against his lightly.

"Well _share_," she mumbles, hooking her free arm around his shoulder.

"I don't think you mind my outlandish theories Beckett," he says.

"That's your theory?"

When his hips rock back, she suffers the loss of contact, is about to chide him for it, but then his palms are flat against her thighs and he's sliding off her underwear with his thumbs and she realises he's not quite done explaining himself. The hand between them moves to rest against his shirt.

"No," he continues, against her ear. "That's a fact."

She kicks the pile of their clothes aside and lets her leg crawl up his calf by the heel until one of his hands comes up to brace it. She curls it around his waist. His other hand is sliding up her body; it lingers over her chest eliciting a moan, but continues until it finds her cheek, tracing over bone. "I think," he murmurs, pulling back to look at her, and she thinks for a minute that he's going to say too much, some kind of admission, because it's all over his face. Instead, he gives her a sly smile and says, "We should test the integrity of this door."

His hips search for hers and there's a pleasant lack of friction, because she's wet with want, but she's raised on her toes and they can't quite negotiate the shift of position. Their hands meet between them.

She smiles.

And then inhales, groans out, "Good theory."

"You think?"

Her fingers grip his shoulders for leverage. "Convince me harder."

He does.

Her head knocks the door which moves behind them in rhythm, all cause, all effect. For her, it's pleasure that isn't building to anything, not desperate, frenzied, not in need of release. She brings one of her palms to the side of his face, holds his cheek until they're looking at each other. "The door's going to hold Castle."

(It could be about something else, about _them_.)

And then Beckett leans back and her scarf falls, trapped between her neck and the wall and the wool tickles at her thighs. She closes her eyes and he watches her lips move as she gasps. It's the way they part for air; it's all of _her_, everywhere. His hand tightens at her hip, leaves marks in its wake but he needs to hold onto something, because everything else feels lost, in sensation, in body-wracking orgasm, in- "- Beckett." He closes his eyes and his forehead rests against the cool wall beside her head. "Kate."

He leans forward and breathes her hair, feels her smiling against his cheek as he stills, her hand stroking along the back of his neck.

"You're right about one thing," she sing-songs in his ear. "I do enjoy your theories."

"Knew it," he manages, between the need for air.

She unhooks her leg and stands on both her feet experimentally, reaches out and takes both of his hands. Now they're warm, hot, and his fingers curl around hers. She bows her head and the scarf falls to the floor and she stares at their hands, dazed, surprised at how well they do this. Not the sex – she always knew that would be good, he always thought it would be great – but the _after_. There's no awkward dance for clothing or stilted conversation. They just pick up where they left off.

He drops one of her hands to lean against the wall, slides down to the floor and tugs at her other one, still clasped in his until she slumps down beside him.

"One day," he says, "We're going to have to use the bed."

"Tomorrow," she promises, closing her eyes and leaning into the wall. She can tell without opening her eyes that he's grinning. "I'll take off all your clothes too."

"I have nothing against nakedness," he tells her, "As my record shows."

She snorts.

"But _your_ clothes are more of a problem for me than mine."

"I'll take mine off too."

"Tomorrow?"

It's a serious question.

She considers it for a second. "Third time's the charm, right Castle?"

"Thought you didn't count."

"Just for that, I'm making you wait until Wednesday."

They fall quiet and lean against her door, nudging shoulders, until he whispers against her hair. "I'll wait for as long as you want."

She nods. "I know."

"So you should know that I could never give up on you."

There's nothing to say to that. She yawns and rests her head on his shoulder. "You should go."

"I know."

Still, they linger for moments more.

It's another step forward, a good start.


	3. one of two

Notes: Remember _Dial M For Murder_? I wouldn't blame you if you don't, it was what? Three weeks ago now? So this might possibly be the latest post-ep ever. However unfortunately I have this annoying real life and there was this fic-a-thon that made me annoying productive at _things other than things I am already writing _and this actually took me longer than I thought it would, since I basically knew exactly how it was going to go as soon as I saw the episode. It's a series of deleted scenes, but I've quote the dialogue that happens between each one so you should be able to piece it around the episode fairly easily (by the description of Beckett's outfits as she takes them off if nothing else...)

I don't entirely _like_ it, because I think it's only cohesive as a narrative(/not awkwardly paced) if you fit it really closely into the show, but I wasn't sure how else to write it to smooth over the edges. Also I've felt a bit writer's block-y lately and I always hate it when things feel forced and _do you know how hard it is to write phone sex when you have houseguests?_ You probably don't. Anyway. I hope you enjoy it even if I don't, so much.

PS No comments about the longest elevator ride in history. I know. Shh. I was raised in _Grey's Anatomy_ fandom.

* * *

><p><strong>chapter three: one of two (or <strong>_**probability 101 – beating the odds**_**)**

After the first day working Laura Cambridge's murder he shadows her out the door at seven thirty. They share glances as they wait for the elevator and her eyes smile at him when her lips don't. Their tell is that they're too quiet, probably, but there's no one there to see it.

(It's been a week, and mercifully Ryan and Esposito are still somehow blissfully ignorant. Then again, they don't really act differently. And he hasn't been at the precinct much because their last case was open-shut. Still, she expected it to be as obvious to her male colleagues as it was to Lanie, who has a sixth sense for these things. The ME had barely pulled back the sheet before crowing _about damn time_ at her in the morgue.)

When the doors open, the elevator is empty, save for them, and when they close again he crowds her. She twists around against the wall, bumps a button for another floor accidentally, but Beckett doesn't notice and Castle doesn't mind because it's a moment alone, and it's not that it's _better_ but it is still _exciting_ when those are stolen.

The pads of her fingers have found the nape of his neck and trace skin, smooth down hair. She leans forward, stops inches from his lips. And then she's letting a small groan of pleasure escape into his mouth and it rumbles against his tongue.

He always closes his eyes when they kiss; he wonders if she's watching him.

"What was that for?" he says, leaning back against the wall, fingers moving over her badge at her hip and thumb pressing up under her shirt to find skin. "Not that there needs to be a reason."

She shrugs, steps back out of his reach as the doors open on the third floor and close again. "I just wanted to," is her answer and she gives him a small, conspiratorial smile.

"Does this mean you'll be coming over later?"

"Not tonight." Her hand trails through her hair and he's jealous of it. She gives him a look. "Don't look so sad Castle. Gotta give you a chance to miss me."

"Oh, I'll miss you."

The way he says it has her missing certain parts of him already.

"Not like that."

"I'd miss you in the other ways too Beckett." He reaches out, curls his arm around her farthest shoulder and draws her into his side, leaning into her where their sleeves are perfectly aligned.

"It's ten hours, tops." Her voice is sarcastic but she rests her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes, briefly. By her estimation they have about ten seconds before the doors open into the lobby and the spell is well and truly broken.

It's not that it's a secret, exactly, but she's never taken kindly to idle gossip and besides, there's too little to tell, professionalism aside – which it never really is, with her. He doesn't mind so much, even though he makes a show of it, all _Beckett, you're ashamed of me, I knew it_, cue eye between them are shifting, slowly giving way, but he doesn't want them to change completely.

They start from the cases, the intellectual challenge of solving murders, a working partnership. It's a familiar and personal brand of intimacy, something that is all them and losing that is ... unthinkable. So it's almost entirely business as usual at the precinct, at what they both consider _work_ now.

And secretly, they both like it that way.

"What can I say?" Castle nudges her side. "I'm needy."

She laughs and nudges him back and as they step out of the elevator she gives him a look that's all lashes and want. "Oh, I can help you with those needs."

"I know you can."

In the street she smiles and tosses it to him over her shoulder. "Call me, before you go to sleep."

He smirks after her, eyes tracking the movement of her hips.

* * *

><p><em>Mr. Castle. Do you remember me?<em>

_I called you before. About Detective Beckett's safety._

_I remember._

_Once again, Mr. Castle, it seems like we need to talk._

* * *

><p>After the conversation with the mystery friend of Montgomery's, he's feeling far too serious for the look she gave him outside the precinct and he fights the desire that borders on need, the urge to travel across town to her door, to ask her for more than she's willing to give.<p>

He sits with the lights off in his office but the room is illuminated by the murder board that's covered in facts he's long ago committed to memory. His mind is turning it over and over and over again. And it won't rest until he can see her, even if it's only in their old way, the smell of her hair during the dance in the door way, almost touches, significant looks. The thing is, this new thing they do, it's sex – and it's _good_, it's affectionate sex, emotional connection – but for all that it's intimate, it's not intimacy. She still doesn't let him close outside of that context, not beyond the occasional hug or the times that, out of the blue, she decides she wants to kiss him.

Most days, most nights, that's okay. He's always taken her lead and it's more than he expects and he wouldn't trade it for the alternative. But some days he just wants to find solace in her, _be_ with her, and then it's not quite enough. It's not that he won't wait for her – he will and without resentment – it's just that sometimes it _takes_ something of him to do it, not pieces but a slow erosion.

It's counter to instinct. The thought of losing her makes him want to cling to her. So while normally, her teasing about _needs_ would evoke the smell of her on his fingers, the taste of her in both their mouths, that desperate feeling he gets when she's hot and wet and loud against him, tonight he just wants the feel of her shoulder, to nose into the hollow above her collarbone, to feel the hard and soft of her.

He just wants her to be alive, because sometimes it still hits him that _she wasn't_, very nearly, that there's no reason that she should be, not with the odds being what they were. It's easy to say, in hindsight, that the probability of survival equals one, but there are other numbers. She is one of two: in ten to survive her cardiac injury, in a thousand to survive flat-lining in an ambulance and of _them_, his partner, friend, _outlier_. Now the doctors just agree with what he thought all along, that she is extraordinary.

The glow of the screen is eerie, but it's familiar to him. And some nights it isn't lonely, it's filled with the people he creates on computer screens and pages. But some nights it's silent and it stares him down and even though he's hours from sleep he decides her voice is better than none of her.

(Anything to break up the quiet.)

She answers her phone with "I'm touching myself for you."

Immediately, it's something he wants and doesn't want, in a paradox that probably reveals too much about his psyche. The screwed up parts of him are better hidden with murkier origins than hers; that was something that happened to her. He thinks he was probably born with his, the fascination with tragedy, the need to skirt edges. He's not sure that what motivates this desire is entirely healthy.

And he's even less convinced that his response is about more than avoiding her suspicion, hiding a deception he's worried she won't forgive.

"Beckett." It's after a pause, and he sounds distracted, _sad_. For a moment she feels vulnerable, like maybe she's found some place to go that he won't follow, but at least he doesn't insult her by asking what she means.

She feigns impatience though. (Insecurity has never flattered her.) "Come on Castle, keep up."

"Have you ever known me not to?"

"First time for everything."

"Apparently. So, _detective_, what exactly are you touching?"

"I'm rubbing the two fingers that were inside me when you called against my clit."

She states it, like she's telling him what she knows on the way to a crime scene, and somehow that's better than a bedroom voice because it's all _Beckett_. And that evokes a very strong image of her doing exactly what she says she's doing.

Castle leans back in his chair, exhales, feels himself getting hard at her half-gasp over the line. "How does it feel Beckett?"

"Good Castle." The first half of her sentence is all her feigning irritation at him, as though he's asked an obvious question, but she groans out the rest. "So good."

"Stop." He closes his eyes to her face where it sits on his makeshift case board, linked to other crimes by little tiny lines, the web cast by a conspiracy that's caught them all. "I want you to last."

She'd scoff if he wasn't right; just the thought of what it's doing to him is enough to have her on edge. Between her thighs, flesh twitches and _wants_ but she does stop. "Are you enjoying this Castle?"

The smirk carries through the phone.

He breathes and focuses on the present and lust that's crescendoing with his pulse, tamps down all his concerns and the need for comfort. Sex is an old place to hide, old as the sin itself. He never has with her though. It's a lesser betrayal, one he feels resting on top of all the others.

"Do you want to tell me how to get myself off?"

Despite the whelming tirade pitching inside him, her voice cuts through it, silences his inner monologue for moment enough to draw a groan. It's genuine and spontaneous and a surprise to them both.

"Yes," he says, low and thick in his throat like the words would linger if he swallowed them. "Is that what you want?"

"Castle, I want to make you hard," she answers, honest. "I want you to listen to me and picture me and want to touch yourself because of me."

"At least the first part of that mission is well and truly accomplished Beckett." He shifts.

"What should I do?" she hums. "Tell me how you'd touch me if you were here."

That causes a longing to grow in his chest. _If they were together_. She likes to feel wanted. And he does want her, so he doesn't tell her that if they were together, sex wouldn't be the first thing on his mind.

Sometimes they need different things. Usually they find some way to meet in the middle.

"I'd lay between your legs."

"You do like to see what you're doing," she comments, observationally.

"I like to see what it does to you. And you like being watched."

She groans. "I do."

"Tell me what it's doing to you."

"It's making me so impatient for you to touch me."

"Then use two fingers." His eyes are still closed. "Push them inside of you, curl them so you feel it. In and out Beckett. You like that. But just that. Don't touch anywhere else yet."

"Okay." She breathes out just how much she likes it.

"Don't rock against your hand. That's cheating."

"How did you know I was doing that?"

"Because you always do that if you're close."

"I want you to be close too Castle," she says in a low voice, "I want to hear you."

He draws a breath, says what he thinks which is, "Anything for you."

His shirt comes over his head awkwardly around the phone, but it's necessary.

At the quiet she says, "Oh god. You _are_ enjoying this as much as I am."

"Did you think that I wouldn't?" he responds, finding a rhythm, groaning back at her when she moans.

"What next?" she says, "Tell me what to do next."

"Put your fingers in your mouth."

She sucks on them loud enough for him to hear it.

"That's what you taste like Beckett." It's suddenly all he can think of, how she tastes and feels against his tongue and the way her knees sometimes come up to trap him where she wants him as she comes into his mouth. His next words are an effort. "I love the way you taste."

"Mmm." She pants and pulls her fingers from her mouth with a soft smack of lips. "Me too." And then she gets something predatory about her, the way she does when she knows she's saying something dirty and enjoying it, "I like it when you come in my mouth."

_Fuck._ "Beckett?"

"Yes?"

"Turn over onto your stomach and touch yourself."

She makes a sound that approximates a whimper as she does, and he says, "I like the way you sound when you _come_."

(It's an instruction and they both know it.)

Her pillow swallows some of her choicer curses, but he hears her moan, _oh_ and _yes_ and his name, and imagines her hips working her into her hand, knees half raising her off the mattress, the naked curve of her back and her hair splayed out along her spine and mouth wet against her sheets. In that moment, he forgets all that plagues him, the distance he doesn't want between them, and he shifts until his cell is caught between his shoulder and his ear, lets his orgasm shadow hers like he does, making a mess of the shirt in his lap.

She laughs in his ear. "So what do you think? Should I give up my day job?"

He's still finding enough air, but when he does speak he hears breath stall at the verge of a sentence when he says, "I wish you were here" and she doesn't know how answer for a moment.

But then she sighs and he feels her letting go of it, so he knows it's more than just something to be said. "Me too." Then, wryly: "Except that you'd cling to me like a vice and keep me awake all night."

"If it's my methods you object to, I'm sure I could think of other ways to keep you up all night."

"Your methods aren't the problem." She's quiet and a little bit contrite, and it makes him think that she's heard a lot more than he's plainly said. "It's the lost sleep when we've got an open case."

At the thought he yawns and she echoes and then laughs quietly. "See? Sleep Castle, I'll see you in the morning."

Morning means a murder, coffee and convoluted theories, and something he knows but she doesn't. She'll be out of reach all day. It's a relief and it's not.

"Bright and early," he agrees.

She smirks, teases him for being less fond of mornings than she is, adds, "Well, _bright_ anyway."

"And bearing beverages of good will."

"Good." He hears her stretch out. It's in the way she half-yawns into the mouthpiece, the reflexive give of her mouth in the wake of the give of her muscles. "Now, unless you're looking for some _other _kind of release." (She's grinning, probably at her ceiling.) "What was it you called it? Therapy?"

It's unintentionally too close to the mark, because in many ways, all he wants is to unburden himself, to tell her everything he knows. They do their best work using each other as sounding boards. Looking into her mother's case and all that surrounds it isn't the same alone.

She finishes the sentence, interrupts his thoughts, "Then I'd say we're done."

"At least until morning," he confirms. "If your goal was to prove that phone sex operators have nothing on you then you were more than successful."

"What _exactly _do you know about phone sex operators Castle?" she says, playful.

"I know a thing it's not worth paying four ninety nine a minute for something you've given me for years for free."

"Years?"

"Good conversation Beckett, witty repartee."

"Ah."

"Speaking of conversation-" There's a worrying pause, her teeth in her lip, and then: "You know you can talk to me."

"Beckett."

"I was thinking, today, about what Sarah Marx said, about it not being about the sex, that it's often about someone to talk to and I just thought…" she pauses, "That's sad Castle. That so many men-"

"- and women-"

"_People_, are that lonely." She sighs. "And that sexually unfulfilled."

"You're judging."

"It must be about indulging fantasies that you can't in your real relationships."

"Probably."

"I don't want you to feel like that." She says it like she's trying not to say it quietly, like she'd say something she wanted to hide, because it's _not_, not anymore, not from him. And she's been working on acknowledging that, at saying the things she impulsively thinks of as secrets when her conscious mind disagrees with her instinct.

(More and more with him, she finds she doesn't get that sick feeling that she normally does when she reveals something that makes her vulnerable, like her stomach is flipping at an imaginary loss of gravity as she falls. She thinks it's because he never really sees her as vulnerable. If anything, it hurts a little bit how much he sees her as impervious, a case he's never going to crack.)

"I'm well aware that you are happy to indulge my fantasies." It's always best to fall back on the familiar when she tests their new boundaries. He reminds her with humour that the foundation is solid and she treads less lightly, and it's been working so far. He reassures her in a lower voice after it draws a laugh of her. "And I know I can talk to you."

(It's mostly true.)

"Good," she says and then yawns. "I have to go before I fall asleep. I'll see you and my coffee in six hours."

"Too soon Beckett." He groans at the thought.

"Goodnight," she says decisively and hangs up first (she always does).

He's left to clean up by the light of the screen, the images of her and her mother and Montgomery and all their dead villains staring right at him.

They are ghosts that haunt his sleep.

* * *

><p>The next morning, Castle watches her work unnoticed for a moment that extends as he takes in all the familiar lines of her. It's weighing on him today, not just guilt, but <em>fear<em>. The way that he loves her gets a desperation to it that he doesn't like because it makes him remember her words in Brooklyn: _I don't want to need you, that's not love_.

The coffee in his hands is warm as his heart in his chest echoes, protests, says _it is, it is, it is_. But he knows she's right. It's not love. It's just that fear of losing her: to her mother's murder, to the secret he's keeping, to a bullet. It's hard of course, to completely untangle one feeling from the other, but at least he knows what motivates him. And it's still pure, if a little disturbed.

She wasn't the only one to suffer through the summer. He's seen her panic, seen the way it physically grips her and it's familiar to him. It's different of course, because he doesn't think his is pathological, but still it's there. Particularly in the middle of the night when he wakes up alone from dreams he can't remember. Those nights seem darker than others, and the absence of light has _weight_. As he watches shadows pass over the ceiling, forming shapes of things that aren't really there, it settles heavy in his chest, hollows it out, suffocates him.

So he has to do this, has to protect her. Just for a little bit longer, he promises himself, the time isn't right to tell her.

He's well aware that he's making excuses, but the situation really does feel impossible.

* * *

><p><em>This will destroy Weldon, you know.<em>

_Yeah, I know._

_And when he's gone the first thing she'll do is get rid of Castle._

_I know._

* * *

><p>Alexis is drawing up lists when he sulks through the door. There are neatly stacked piles of business cards, the careers page from the Times and her laptop open beside her. She's looking between all of them and taking notes in a chart that looks like she's planning the Battle of Hastings. Then again, a job in this market might be a harder ask.<p>

He slumps beside her and puts an arm around her.

She objects, loudly, but leans into his shoulder. "_Dad_."

"Shh," he says. "You're fixing me."

"Hard day?"

He nods. "Something like that."

Alexis pulls back and studies him. "You're home early, looking dejected and you haven't even asked about the damage caused by King Lear." She nudges his side. "This has something to do with Beckett."

"Stop being too wise for your own good," he chides. "She sent me home. We don't agree on the best approach to this case, that's all."

Alexis gives him a look, like she knows that it's _not_ all, that there's more at play than he's letting on, but she doesn't press. "She's sent you home before dad and it never lasts more than a night."

He tries to remember if that's true. It probably is, except for the summer after he first started shadowing her. But that was more than warranted. Now he wishes he'd never gone behind her back to get that file, had never started all of this in motion.

"In fact, you're both hopeless at arguing. It's like you can't stay away from each other."

He wishes _that _were true, but two summers and countless nights between cases and more recently, sexual encounters, beg to differ.

Alexis is on the other side of the counter now, pulling things from the fridge. When she turns back to him, she sports a teasing grin. "Help me make dinner and I'll tell you about Paige's dad seeing if he can get me an internship at his firm."

He makes a face at her. "But you haven't said anything mature beyond your years and unintentionally relevant to my problem which helps me solve it yet."

"It's her _job_ dad, not just something she does for fun. You have to follow her lead there." She pushes a chopping board and two tomatoes across the counter. "Chop. But you know that. So what's this really about?"

"I just…" He pauses. "She said I couldn't be objective. And she's right. I can't be objective if it means destroying a good man's career, if it might mean the end of our partnership. I can't lose her."

"Dad." She takes pity on him, sets down her knife and says, "You can't let a murderer walk free because of what it might do to you and Beckett. Besides, if you never set foot in that precinct again you wouldn't _lose_ her, not in the way you're really afraid of. But you might, if you ask her to choose between you and her job."

He sighs, because she's right.

"Enough about me, Paige's dad, internship. Tell me all about it."

She launches into an excited spiel about law firms and college applications.

He's written more than twenty novels and his work has been inspired at times, but Alexis is easily the best thing he's ever done.

* * *

><p><em>You think I don't know what's at stake here? Do you think I actually want to do this?<em>

_Then don't do it._

_I don't have a choice._

* * *

><p>When she leaves him at the top of the steps of city hall, she's thinking too many things at once to do anything useful at the precinct. She tries anyway, files for a warrant for Weldon's coat and studies the murder board waiting on the judge. She runs over everything they have again, calls Lanie to ask for more, sends Ryan and Esposito to interview the sister and the super and the publisher and the college friend for a second time, re-checks names against alibis against statements.<p>

The warrant comes through. CSU runs the coat and gives her a preliminary answer, says they'll have something solid in the morning.

Ryan and Esposito leave her at seven, still checking all her facts.

Gates leaves at eight, tells her to go home but she barely looks up.

By nine-thirty, she's read everything again, and then again, and she's sure she's not missing anything. She chews her lip in front of the murder board, feeling her heart racing with the burden of all the caffeine she's consumed, and she realises it's nearly ten, she hasn't eaten, and she's thinking herself in circles.

Beckett flips the lights off as she leaves.

The cold of the street is almost a relief after the warmth of the 12th. She feels her head clear as she walks with her hands in her pockets, so she keeps walking, and walking, and walking. It's twelve blocks in the opposite direction to her apartment, but she still hasn't decided whether she'll actually go up when she arrives in front of his building.

The night doorman recognises her though, lets her in, effectively deciding for her, and she pulls off her gloves and scarf in the elevator. She winds the scarf around and around her hands, twists it nervously between her fingers and shoves it into the pocket of her coat.

It's much too late to expect niceties when she knocks on his door. Besides, she's not in the mood to be polite, not when he's making her feel like the villain of the piece for doing her job, not when Gates might have him gone if the mayor _is_ guilty. She's angry; rationally at the situation and irrationally at him for not understanding without her having to spell it out for him.

(Because he should know that their partnership is something she values, doesn't want to lose, wouldn't throw away. He should _know_ that she _loves him back_. It's all over both of them whenever they're together and usually he's so good at reading her.)

"Kate." He runs a hand over his face. "What-"

Her fingers press into his mouth. "Don't say anything."

He can't, so the point is moot.

"I just-" she walks him backwards, into the apartment, and the door swings shut behind her.

The sentence is hanging when she kisses him and it's frantic, all need, and one of her heels is digging into his calf as she searches for more of his hips. He digs his fingers into where her knee is bent and runs them up over her thigh until she shivers at the contact, pulls at his lip with her teeth and groans.

It's a stumble towards his bedroom, and she shucks off his shirt and loses her coat and suit jacket along the way. She tugs off her vest in the doorway and his hands are immediately spanning her waist, fingers slipping against her shirt, mouth edging from her jaw to her collar. Her fingers fist in his hair, tug, urge his mouth to a different, better spot at her neck.

When she loses her shoes and drops in height he has to bend to suck at it. Her back arches to keep his lower half pressed to hers. He's hard against her stomach and she moans at it, at the physical fact that he wants her, at his mouth and his hands which have edged lower, beneath the waistband of her pants, and are holding her against him.

She gasps and her hands falter as they reach for her service piece when he shifts until his leg is trapped between her thighs and she rocks into it, instinctive and sinful and _good_. So good. She thinks she says so against his ear.

Pushing him back is the last thing she wants, but she does it, breath coming fast and hard and looking like she's shocked by it, that they're capable of this, how hard and fast and stark it is.

Finally, her hands co-operate, pull out the weapon. She moves across the room and sets it and her badge down on the dresser, knowing he's watching, _liking_ that he's watching. This is what's at the heart of this argument after all: her job, their partnership.

He sits on the bed, looks pained for a moment in the face of her smirk. It fades to a frown. She bites into her lip.

"Kate."

"No." Her stockings slip against the carpet creating friction that tickles at the soles of her feet as she walks over to stand between his knees, leans down to take his hands, twists their fingers together. "Castle, don't."

She bends to kiss him, braces one of her hands t on his shoulder and freeing one of his. He thumbs her hair from her face. The furious intensity fades into something else, something quieter, and, as his mouth moves against hers painfully slowly, she doesn't feel angry or helpless or frustrated anymore. She just feels sad.

The hand at his shoulder pushes him from her and he shifts back on the bed, pulls her with him, until they're laying face to face. He finds her face again with his fingers, brushes them along her cheek, and she wants to cry.

She's always been in the habit of using sex to distract herself from more difficult feelings though, and instead, she uses both hands to undo his pants, works one inside his boxers until she finds skin. He hisses into her mouth when she closes her fist around him, runs it up and down the length of his erection. The sound is swallowed by the kiss, and she lets it warm her.

His fingers glance hers as she unbuttons her own pants. He wedges his palm against her underwear, fingers curling against where they're wet then rubbing up, so the pads of them press damp fabric against her clit.

They both groan.

Beckett kisses him, all hot mouth and dirty tongue and then breathes it against his cheek. "Help me take off your pants."

He does, a tandem effort with both their unengaged hands, and hers come off too, easier and more practiced. When she's kicked them off, she moves her hand to his shoulder, sits up and urges him to follow. His mouth is distracted by her hip though, tongue flicking over and around and toying with the idea of between her legs, hand still working against her, unimpeded by clothing.

When he looks up, she shakes her head.

He goes where she implores him to with light touches of her palm.

Castle is sitting against the headboard when she moves over him, knees cradling his hips, and he brings his hands up to her waist against, falls forward so his head rests against her stomach while she reaches between them, uses her hand to hold him steady, draw him into her.

When she sinks down, they're eye to eye. Her lips part in a near-silent gasp but it doesn't reach her eyes, and he sees, that she does know what's at stake, that she's conflicted, all the things she doesn't want to lose.

She moves against him, rocks back and forward as she slides up and down, and her head bows as her fingers come up to unbutton her shirt. It obscures her face with her hair. He waits, lifts his hips to meet hers and curls his hands against her thighs, but when she pulls the shirt from her shoulders and unclasps her bra after it, he lets his fingers wander. They trail up her side, stopping to thumb against her breasts and then along the curve of her chin, and finally, he pushes her curls behind her ears like he wanted to from the start.

"Look at me," he says.

Her head shakes. "Not yet."

He watches her face change, all concentration, and she busies her hands, one between her legs and one at her chest, pinching hard at her nipple, her teeth work into her lip and she drives down rougher against him.

He drops his hands from her face to hold her hips, to still her.

"Castle," she groans, frustrated, but it's not the sex she's complaining about. He rolls his hips back so he's only barely inside her and holds there, and it's _maddening _and she feels her body tensing in response to it and she stills her hand so she doesn't come then and there. The sex is as good as it always is, but it's intense, emotional, and she doesn't _want_ that. She wants to forget. She doesn't want to think, over and over, in time with their bodies, that it might be the end. (Because she's _cop_, she _has_ to be, and if he can't let her do her job then it has to be over.)

"Not like that." His hands span the curve of her back as he pushes up into her, unhurried and deliberate, and gravity relaxes her against him, so it's not _gentle_, it's just not frenzied. With his palms flat against the bones of her shoulder, he hugs her against him, sits forward into her to shift their position, so her face falls into his shoulder and he presses up against sensitive flesh with each slow slam of hips.

It's criminal, she thinks, that they can be so good at this.

He kisses her temple.

She bites at the skin she finds and fights tears when his fingers move to rub against her, in tempo with the grind of their bones and she half sobs her orgasm into his shoulder, clawing into his biceps, feeling it wrack through her body with a force that surprises her.

(Because usually when she's so far inside her own head she finds it hard to let go so completely.)

Her thighs shake and she trembles around him and he thrusts once more, so harsh that it's violent, almost painful, sends her forehead knocking into his wall when he comes inside her.

They're damp from exertion, and he tastes her shoulder, strokes down her back and whispers her name into her skin as he breathes.

It's apology and prayer and exclamation.

She wants to be relieved, wants to feel the calm lull that usually overtakes her after sex, but even though her body hums, sated, she only feels exhausted, unsure, miserable.

"What are you thinking?" he asks her, shifting so he's no longer inside her and sex makes a mess between their bodies.

"Nothing," she says, even though they both know she's lying.

Really, she's thinking that she wants to ask him to tell her that he loves her, that he still will if she puts his friend in jail and Gates kicks him out of the precinct. She _knows_ he does, he will, but he hasn't said it again since she was dying in the cemetery and there are times when her doubts are louder than what she knows.

So she won't ask in case he won't tell, or because it reveals too much of her and she already feels that the bones of her are showing through. Besides, she's been holding onto that secret with good intentions for too long to let it out this way, now, when they are so far from their best.

He sighs. "Kate."

_Beckett_. She wants to say it, wants to correct him, but it sounds too harsh even in her head.

"I have to go," she says instead.

He holds her tighter against his chest for the briefest moment, but lets her go before she can think about struggling free.

He doesn't look at her while she dresses – underwear, pants, shirt, no bra – and retrieves her gun from the dresser. Instead he stares at the ceiling, covers his face with his hand and listens as she scoops up the rest of her things, hops into her shoes and walks out. Somehow the fact that he's _not _looking makes it worse.

When she closes his front door behind her, she slumps against it, draws her coat around her and folds her arms around her rescued clothing. One of her gloves is missing. And she regrets coming at all, because somehow this feels worse than the simple disagreement of daylight hours. It feels like an argument over much bigger things.

As she steps into the freezing air of the street, they're both wishing that he'd asked her to stay.

* * *

><p><em>I can't apologize for doing my job, Castle.<em>

_And I would never ask you to._

* * *

><p>Castle can see how much the abrupt end to their investigation is wearing at her as she takes down the murder board. It all goes in a box, which will be assigned a number and filed away in a warehouse somewhere, filled with similar cases that have come to dead ends. Normally, he'd bring her coffee, crack a joke, try to move the stubborn line of her frown as she puzzles over all the pieces one last time. Tonight that's not enough, won't be for either of them, and he knows it, but he has a social engagement with Mayor Weldon and he doesn't have time to needle her until she agrees to talk to him, to go home with him, to fix what it feels like they've broken.<p>

(They've made silent headway. He saw the moment she forgave him. And he never felt like he had to forgive her. But it might not have fixed things entirely.)

He comes up beside her and curls his hand around her wrist, stilling the movement of the whiteboard eraser.

"Hey Castle," she murmurs, without turning her head.

His thumb works up under her sleeve, brushes along the skin and tendons of her wrist. That earns him a look that's verging on a glare. He shrugs in apology but it's unwarranted, because she softens almost immediately, gives him a tiny rueful smile that says she wants more than this limited contact too.

"I'm sorry," he says, sees her starting to feel overwhelmed and adds, "About the case."

"Without you, I would've been here tonight anyway." She steps back, sits on her desk and sighs. "Good thinking, getting Sarah to listen to the mayor's staff."

"Yeah well." He rests his weight beside her and she is aware of the proximity between their shoulders, close but not touching. "I couldn't sleep last night. I had a lot of time to think."

"Not here Castle."

"I know."

She nudges her elbow into his. "Later?"

"I can't tonight." Beckett doesn't press for an explanation but he feels like he should give her one anyway. "The mayor felt the need for a few celebratory libations."

"I don't blame him."

"And I don't blame you."

Her head turns, and she studies him before she nods. "I don't blame you either."

"And I know you said not here, but … here is the point, isn't it?" he says. "This – doing this with _you_ – I don't ever want to lose that." (It's an unintentionally telling way of phrasing it, but he means every word.) "But you were right," he continues before she responds. "It was hard for me to objective on this one."

"I didn't want to do it anymore than you did Castle." She stretches her legs out a little and stares at her shoes. "Because I don't want to lose this either. You should _know _that."

"I do. But it was your job. And you did it like you always do, better than anyone."

"It's just that this time, it wasn't enough." Beckett rocks back on the heel of her palms and stands, plucks the last remaining bits and pieces from the board and places them into the box that's waiting in his hands. "Win some lose some I guess."

As she chews on her lip, he places the lid on the box, looks up, meets her eyes. "No victories Kate," he says. "Only battles."

Montgomery's words shock her. It's not something they talk about – the loss was too great – but she finds this small way of remembering him is a welcome kind of pain, the kind she feels they owe him. It's lessening with time. She nods, takes the box from his hands and holds it against her chest.

Then, in a reaction he's not expecting, she smiles, half-laughs. "Gates said the same thing, in her way. That it's a long game."

"So what's our next move?"

She keeps smiling. "Are we still talking about the case?"

"What else would we be talking about?" He's not quite feigning ignorance, there's just another, different question underneath the rhetorical one.

"You and me." She looks around quickly, sees they're alone, reaches forward to thumb at his collar as she steps back.

"That's up to you," he says as her hand falls back to her side. "You know that."

"Then, tomorrow?" she asks.

He hears the question mark as audible hope and nods.

They exchange _'nights_ and she promises to call him if there's a body and later, even if there's not.

* * *

><p><em>Trust me when I say it's not your concern.<em>

_It is if it involves Beckett or her mother's murder._

* * *

><p>That night, he lays awake and catches a hint of her on his sheets. His mind is still processing facts, meetings with shadowy men and her neat script on the murder board and the tangled web he's weaving in his office.<p>

_A well placed pawn_.

Perhaps he's stretching the metaphor, but he can't help having trouble picturing Kate Beckett as a pawn. And a king isn't powerful, important but vulnerable, in need of defending. The most powerful piece is always the queen.

Across town, she's still thinking about Laura Cambridge, about all their leads, about how the problem with cases like this, strings pulled by unknown puppeteers, is that she's always one step behind and They (the amorphous, seemingly omnipotent they) are always too many moves ahead.

It reminds her of her mother's murder.

She knows that like that case, she has to put Laura Cambridge to rest, and tomorrow she will, but in the dark, there's a louder part of her that says _this is what you do_. She fights for the women who die as collateral damage, in the face of leads that disappear into dust, of powerful men leaving bodies in their wake. The futility and frustration of it makes her _ache_.

_Play it piece by piece_.

They both dream of chess.


End file.
